What It Takes to Get Ahead in Your Marketing Career

Today’s marketing industry is growing and changing at lightning speed, so if you’re looking to land a great marketing career opportunity, you’ve got to be savvy and strategic in your thinking and execution. Marketing leaders are looking for key skills, attributes and characteristics when building their dream teams, so whether you’re searching for a new job at a different company or trying to accelerate your career at your current one, it’s time to get real about what it takes to achieve your career goals. I recently spoke with Laura Patterson, President and Founder of VisionEdge Marketing. Ms. Patterson is one of the leading authorities on marketing and performance management, marketing operations, and marketing data and analytics – and has helped more than 100 companies in a variety of industries fulfill their marketing potential and achieve a competitive advantage. I wanted to get her perspective on how she hires for VisonEdge, as well as what it takes to maximize your success in your own organization. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation. Michelle Robin: What types of qualities do you look for in candidates? [caption id="attachment_56674" align="alignleft" width="300"] Laura Patterson, President and Founder of VisionEdge Marketing[/caption] Laura Patterson: The role has a lot to do with it, but generally speaking, we look for people who have common traits, the first being passion for service and learning. We’re a service organization in a space around data and analytics, process, transformation. And, it’s a space that evolves, so you can’t just assume that what was working, say 20 years ago, will work today, so marketing professionals must have a passion for learning. We have a motto in our company: Teach our customers how to fish, and you’ll feed them for a lifetime, rather than simply giving them the fish, so they’re not beholding. You have to be thinking that way all the time. I’m also looking for someone with really excellent communication skills. We work with companies all over the world, so you’ve got to be able to communicate online, over the phone, as well as in person. Good, solid presentation skills and facilitation skills are also crucial. It’s also mandatory to have people on our team who are responsible and reliable. Customers are counting on us for deliverables, and there’s often a time crunch. They have a problem, and they’re trying to solve it as quickly as they can in order to be successful. Our team members also have to be resourceful and have the ability to evaluate. Part of being a creative problem solver is being able to evaluate. Finally, the last thing is initiative. You need to solve the problem, get the job done and move it forward. Robin: Those are all great soft skills. How do you evaluate candidates for some of these soft skills? Patterson: We prefer to hire people that we’ve worked with or come from referrals. It helps that I’ve been in the industry a long time, and most of our team has engaged in customer work for a long time as well. Often times, our candidates are people that our team members have known, so we have a sense of their caliber of work. We look at their Linked in profiles and their Twitter account, too. They are the face of our company, so they’ve got to be professional in their impression. You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression, and my people are definitely checking them out. Robin: Of all the qualities you’ve mentioned, what is the most important thing you consider in assessing a candidate? Patterson: Integrity. Ethics and integrity are very critical. There’s a lot of autonomy in what our senior level people do, and there’s even a level of autonomy in what some of our junior level people do, so if you’re not coming from a place of integrity with a really strong value system, you’re going to struggle. Trust in our industry is also very important. Robin: When you’re hiring people, how important is a person’s resume? Also, how about a cover letter? Patterson: I find that it’s most important with our folks that are at an earlier stage in their career, instead of the folks that are at a later stage in their career. That might sound strange, but odds are that if they’re later in their career, I have many other ways to vet them. I know people they know, companies they’ve worked at. So when we receive their resume and cover letter, we are able to easily determine whether or not the candidate is appropriately representing himself/herself. It’s very unlikely that someone in a senior position is someone we don’t know. But in the junior ranks, the resume and cover letter are very important because we don’t know them. We want to be able to ask intelligent questions when we interview them, and many of those questions will come from what they’ve put on their resume or in their cover letter that we’ll ask them to expound on or clarify. I still am a believer in cover letters. I think that spelling and grammar matters. If someone can’t put their best foot forward in a cover letter when applying for a job, then how can I trust that they’ll be able to put together an articulate email to a customer? We also check out the recommendations on LinkedIn. I have thousands of connections on LinkedIn, so sooner or later there’s a connection on LinkedIn that is in common with someone applying for a job. Robin: Since your clients are also marketers, what do you suggest they measure to illustrate their value to their team and their company? Patterson: Unfortunately, many marketers are not very good at setting performance targets for their work that are meaningful to the business. I don’t want to know that you got the webinar done or that you sent out “x” number of invites. I want to know that we’ve got the right people coming and how many of the right people. How do they match up to the kinds of people we like doing business with? Today, data and analytic skills are imperative. Whether that’s being able to create personas, map the customer’s buying journey, segment markets or conduct tests. Marketers need these skills, and not just at the basic level. You need to be able to use data to facilitate decisions and make recommendations. Processes are also very important. Many marketers don’t understand the processes associated with the work that needs to be done. Today, we have so many tools available, and technology is vast and complicated. I think we can sometimes get enamored with shiny toys, and if you don’t have the processes in place to use those tools, then you will not be effective with those tools. Also, be more than just a producer. Organizations are more strategic in nature, and more process focused. Try to figure out how you can help your organization be more effective and efficient. Don’t just track that you sent out that email or social media campaign. Ask yourself, what am I going to do to move the needle and how far did I move it? Marketers today have to be smarter. Robin: What new skills have come about in the last five years that marketers should be sure to have in order to advance their career? Patterson: As far as the future goes, beware of chasing shiny toys! One minute we’re chasing webinars or virtual events, the next minute we’re chasing email campaigns, and then we’re chasing SEO. Now we’re chasing social and mobile. We need to remember how as marketers we play a strategic role in the value for our company. To be best-in-class, we need to remember how to be customer centric. We are the only organization in the company that has the word “market” in our name. And, everything old is new again. For example, customer journey mapping. Our company is 17 years old, so back then we were doing what we called pipeline engineering — figuring out the buying process. Storytelling is another buzzword, but it’s all about making the story resonate with the market in a way that’s compelling and valuable to the market. All of these new ideas are taking root because they were successful in the past and are still valuable today. Another trend I’ve been seeing is how much more technology companies want marketing leaders to know. Job descriptions have become way more technology centric. They ask for experience in a specific marketing analytics platform or CRM software. But, it’s not a director’s job to use it. It’s the manager’s job or an individual contributor’s job to use it. Being familiar and comfortable with technology and understanding what it can and cannot do is what’s important. Leaders need to understand when they need a new technology tool, and be able to articulately communicate this with their team, peers and executives. Robin: What is your vision for the future of a marketer’s role to be best-in-class going forward? Patterson: We’ve been doing research around marketing excellence on our own for 17 years, and have been able to get a good handle on what differentiates best-in-class marketers from the rest of the pack: They are business people first, marketers second. They have business acumen and can engage in business conversations with the C-suite and are strategic in the way they think. They have a passion for accountability. They know how to create metrics, what metrics to track and demonstrate value to the business. They have built solid muscle and skills around analytics. They run marketing like a business and enable marketing to serve as a service of excellence. They are in tune with the growth of the company, not simply a supply chain to Sales. They understand which outcomes matter to the company and can ensure that marketing is better synced up to those outcomes and can deliver. They have a relentless pursuit of excellence. They know they’ll never be perfect, but they’re always assessing, always benchmarking. You have to have a heads up periscope up kind of view instead of head down to the grindstone kind of view. A free version of the 2016 Marketing Performance Management Study from VisionEdge Marketing is available by clicking here.

Personnel/HR/Career Management

What It Takes to Get Ahead in Your Marketing Career

Michelle Robin

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Michelle Robin